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When writing and conceptualising large projects (with numerous chapters, sections, subsections... and other type of meta information like references, tables, figures, keywords...), it is sometimes necessary to have a structured, clearly arranged overview of the current state of the project.

A tree-structured mind map comes to mind. This could be generated and structured automatically drawing on the information from the abovementioned sources. For example, it could arrange chapter headings around the title of the project, and arrange keywords or index entries, references, names of images etc. under the headings in which they appear.

Is there a simple way to achieve this, e. g. a package that provides an option like structure-only=true in the preamble and uses tikz to create a mind map?

If there is no such package, what would be the easiest way to create the described document?

Philipp
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    Why don't you look at the table of contents, the list of figures and the index? – Ulrike Fischer Nov 13 '17 at 09:43
  • @UlrikeFischer Yes, the table of contents shows the document structure, but it does not show data belonging to the corresponding entries, and the list of figures and the index don’t show a connection to the document structure. They don’t provide a good overview. They are not a visualisation like a mind map. – Philipp Nov 13 '17 at 09:51
  • I thought, since a) information in LaTeX is already highly categorised, and b) LaTeX tries to take the task of creating a reasonable layout off the user anyway, it should be possible to “auto-create” such a mind map. – Philipp Nov 13 '17 at 09:54
  • https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/232550/visual-table-of-contents-using-tikz-mindmap-or-similar, https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/215521/links-in-mindmap-as-table-of-contents-in-beamer, https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/215521/links-in-mindmap-as-table-of-contents-in-beamer, https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/261625/visual-table-of-contents-tikz-mindmap-problem-in-output – Ignasi Nov 13 '17 at 09:58
  • I don't believe in mind maps but the etoc package shows an example how to convert a toc to a mind map. Beside this: the toc and the lof are autocreated and naturally you could create a list "table of contents and figures" that combines both and redefine \index so that it writes into it too. – Ulrike Fischer Nov 13 '17 at 10:05
  • see also https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/171854/2891 or https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/56394/2891 – michal.h21 Nov 13 '17 at 11:32
  • @Philipp: Mind maps are overestimated, believe me ;-) –  Nov 13 '17 at 12:39
  • @Philipp I sympathize with your aim, but "LaTeX is already highly categorised" is a myth. There isn't anything in LaTeX2e like an inner representation of the structure of the document (as a tree-like structure for example). Hence, your quite legitimate aim will require as you surmised a dedicated package, whose task will be complicated by the fact that it has to be compatible with other packages (such as hyperref or titlesec etc...). I know I don't help... etoc can be used to some extent indeed but will require work and mark-up (e.g. it does not hook into list of fig. and list of tables). –  Nov 13 '17 at 14:04
  • you could benefit to some extent from Emacs/AUCTeX integration with fold-mode (Show/Hide menu entry in the LaTeX menu), but I am not familiar with it hence can't help much. Some text modes (for reST for example) have a way to insert automatically a table of contents of sectioning units. In brief, possibly some intelligent LaTeX editors provide parts of what you need. –  Nov 13 '17 at 14:10

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